Sukkah the Hut

There's a nip of autumn in the air in Jerusalem. Tuesday was the first morning that I awoke to cloudy skies and intermittent rainy weather.

For the uninitiated, the non-practicing, or the unaware, things have been awfully off in Israel recently, as everyone's life has been taken up by the "Haggim" or "Holidays."

Imagine if you will, a string of National holidays taking over a country’s collective consciousness for a solid three weeks. You know how, in America, there’s that one-week period between Christmas and New Year’s when schools are off and people tend to get a few days off from work? Now stretch that societal limbo over the period of three weeks. And it’s not like the August in France, where everyone just heads out of town for the month. People here not only participate in the celebrations, but thousands of tourists descend on the country, just to observe the holidays. So no one expects any business to get done, and kids haven’t started school yet. People try to make plans, and invariably yet another holiday celebration interferes, bollixing things up.

And suddenly, two weeks into this holiday period, restaurants, cafes, and hotels all over town start building small huts outside of their establishments. And this is literally all over town. Picture Manny Brown’s, Abilene, and Malokai’s blocking South Street foot traffic with little wooden huts with bamboo roofs so people can opt to eat and drink in the succah (the Hebrew word for the aforementioned huts), if it is their religious preference. Imagine all the Indian places in Central Square offering a lunch buffet in the succah while 1369 Cafe comes up with a special Succah Shake for the week. Chew on the image of your local Burger King putting up a hut next to the kiddie playground area.

Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Succot, are the holidays that have pretty much paralyzed Jerusalem for the past few weeks; a paralysis that will continue through next Thursday. Rosh Hashanah, a new years holiday that lacks both binge drinking and Dick Clark, was the Chag that most approximated my experiences in America. Over the course of two days, you're either praying or eating big meals. It's the type of thing where lunch and dinner merge into a massive late-afternoon meal where you eat so much you're tuckered out by 8pm. We were fortunate enough to be invited out for all three of the main Rosh Hashanah meals, and all were sumptuous feasts.

On the other end of the spectrum, Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, was a new experience. The best part about Yom Kippur, aside from the fasting which of course everyone loves and wishes happened more often, is the fact that the roads are almost entirely deserted. And this is, I should note, very different than the typical Shabbat in Jerusalem. Sure, most people don't drive in Jerusalem on Shabbat. But on Yom Kippur, it's totally empty, except for the police cars that drive around to prevent locals from throwing rocks at the less-than-wise people who decided that Yom Kippur was an opportune way to beat traffic. So instead of cars, the roads are full of kids on bikes, roller blades, scooters, and power-wheels. It's unreal and it's everywhere. All I'm saying is, I've never seen this on say, Rt. 70. Oh, and the fasting ended at 5:45pm. That's because Israel changes the clock back between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, making the fast so much more manageable. Seriously, easiest day of not eating ever. And then after we broke the fast, a bunch of us went out to celebrate Annie's birthday. Yes, her birthday was on Yom Kippur. No, I don't think it was as bad as one might expect. It was good times and maybe I'll even post some pictures someday.

Succot, the third of the Haggim, is the festival of huts or something like that. I kind of already described what Succot looks like, but the more relevant issue with Succot is the fact that it last for a week. The first day is the only day that's technically a holy day where no work is allowed, but over the rest of the holiday, business hours are hazy and many people go on vacation.

Thankfully / unfortunately, all of this comes to an end this coming Wednesday night, when we tack on one more holiday where we dance with Torahs. More on this next time.

We're going to Tel Aviv for the weekend, and there's a pretty good chance I'll actually be able to watch the Eagles game on Sunday.

And when are we going to see some indictments at the White House? Is anyone else as excited about this as I am?

Every time the Yankees lose a playoff series, an Angel gets its wings

Hm, unintentional pun.

Keeping up with American sports while here in Jerusalem is not easy. To wit, I've only actually watched one Eagles game while I've been forced to listen to three games on the Internet.

On the one hand, Merrill Reese's smooth baritone trumps even the best Fox coverage by roughly one-thousand percent. Now that I think about it, I could probably be a better announcer than most of the guys on Fox; and the best part would be Tony Siragusa's guaranteed absence. Okay, Joe Buck probably does a better job than I could, but I ask, are there not ten-year-olds in America who could do better color commentary than Chris Collinsworth? And seriously, don't even get me started on Tim McCarver. And Dad, if you're reading this, I'm with you on the "John Madden is too distracted by thoughts of buffets to properly call a game" bandwagon.

Three channels broadcast NFL games in Israel. ESPN shows Sunday night football (live, at 3am) and Monday Night Football (also live, also in the dead of the night). METV shows a couple of games that are being broadcast on CBS in the states (roughly 1-2 Eagles games per season). Fox Sports shows a seemingly arbitrary 1pm Fox (NFC) game, but has thus far neglected to broadcast any 4:15pm games. And as luck would have it, the Eagles are playing a staggering eight late games on Fox this season. So unless anyone has any bright ideas, it's going to be me, Merrill, Mike Quick, and the Eagles, going late into the night together another six times. Sigh. And yes, I was listening to the game this week until 1:30ish, desperately hoping for an Arrowhead-like comeback that never arrived. Double sigh.

When I woke up this morning and had a little spring in my step. I guess my soul knew that the Yankees lost before I could read about it on ESPN.com. Such a shame to see two-hundred and six million dollars go to waste like that. Now the Angels can go and get smoked by the White Sox, which could set up a World Series of the oh-for-forever Astros vs. the aforementioned oh-for-the-last-eighty-something-years White Sox. As a Philadelphia sports fan, this moves me on the one hand, because I have a soft spot for hard-luck teams, but frustrates me on the other hand, because I'd have trouble rooting against either team. And as we all know, the only thing that compares to rooting for Philadelphia sports teams is rooting against non-Philadelphia teams for valid (they beat us last year) or inane (ugly uniforms) reasons. And all that being said, I probably won't see a minute of any of the baseball playoffs. Ah me.

Well, this had nothing to do with Jerusalem, or the fast approaching Yom Kippur, but I just needed to get this off my chest today.

Hm, another unintentional pun. Sorry.

Due to an unexpected error, Mozilla Firefox will now close

And so I learned my lesson to never, ever attempt to blog for more than ten minutes without saving a draft of my entry. That’s two hours of effort down the drain.

To summarize the entry that might have been: We got to Jerusalem, eventually finding a place in Baaka. Getting an apartment took longer than anticipated, and our friends Joel and Eliana put us up for an entire week at their place. They are awesome people, despite Eliana’s allegiance to the Yankees, and we owe them more than a little bit of gratitude.

Our place is only one room, but it’s one fancy room. We’re in the attic of an old Arab house on a quiet street, but we’re very close to a number of supermarkets, coffee places, restaurants, and friends in Jerusalem. We have hardwood floors, whereas most floors in Jerusalem are high-school-hallway tile. Seriously, the outsides of the buildings here are made out of Jerusalem stone, and all the floors I’ve seen are made out of this ugly, grainy grey tile. It’s like all the Jerusalem contractors got together and decided they would put down the ugliest color imaginable inside buildings on all the floors, just for a bit of contrast. Anyway. We have a washer/dryer (uncommon in Jerusalem), central air/heat (less common in Jerusalem), and a Jacuzzi (are you kidding?). Yes, we have a Jacuzzi that also functions as the shower, and it doesn’t work right now. To clarify: The shower works, but the Jacuzzi function needs repairing. The place came fully furnished, and included dishes and cooking utensils. We have a porch that I’m sitting on right now that’s perfect for a group of 6-8 people. The previous tenant had allowed all of the plants to wither to near-death, so we’re trying to nurse some flora back to health. There are few drawbacks to the place. It’s a little small. The fridge could be bigger. The oven is actually a toaster on steroids. That’s all that really comes to mind.

Oh yeah, and the toilet is a little temperamental. We moved in on a Saturday night, and around 6:30 in the morning on Monday we were awoken to the sound of water rushing through our apartment. The toilet, at some point during the night, broke, and the tank filled well past the point of being full. We had about an inch of water over about half of the apartment and no electricity. The entrance to our place is actually on the 2nd story of our building, so we also had to sop up water inside our place and underneath, as water had leaked through our floor into the 2nd floor hallway. And did I mention that the circuit box was soaked? After a few hours and ten rolls of paper towels, things were mostly dry and I bravely flipper the breaker, giving us power once again. So in the end, just a minor annoyance and a couple of hours cleaning up water, right?

Well, not exactly. Two days later, when I tried to shower, there was no hot water. So I flipped the “dude chashmal” (In Israel, your water heater is located on your roof and is accompanied by a solar panel, known as a “dude shemesh.” It’s a brilliant way to save energy, as the sun gives you hot water in the summer, and in the winter, you can flip a switch inside (the aforementioned “dude chashmal”) to electrically heat your water), figuring that the water just needed an electric kick in the proverbial pants. The power went out. I went downstairs, flipped the breaker, tried the “dude” again, and the power went out again. So I took a very cold shower. When I left the apartment shortly thereafter, a downstairs neighbor was waiting for me and pointed out that we had a waterfall flowing from our apartment roof. We called the plumber and he explained that an electrical surge had caused the “dude” to “explode,” thus explaining the lack of hot water and the waterfall. By the end of the day, we had a new “dude,” but were still without power. As the plumber was leaving, we showed us that our electric meter had been holding about a liter of water, possibly explaining the sensitivity of the electricity since the flood. He assured us that once the meter had the chance to dry out, we’d have power again. We left for the evening, and when we came home at 10, we were still without power. The 24-hour electrician (do these guys exist in the US?) showed up rapidly but couldn’t help us and called the electric company to take a look. The guys from the electric company showed up around 12:30am and fixed whatever wire had atrophied from being under water for several days, and miraculously the power was back. Now our only reminder of the flood is slightly warped hardwood floor and the lingering concern that it could happen again. I think we’ve been largely drama-free since then, and we’ve been settling in the past couple of weeks.

I’m currently enrolled in an intensive Hebrew ulpan, where I’m learning the language five days a week, about five hours each day. I’m learning at an absorption center called Beit Canada (House of Canada) about 30 minutes from our place. I’m in a class of eight or so recent immigrants to Israel who hail from Argentina, Russia, Iran, and France. It’s amazing what a difference just a couple of weeks has made in my confidence speaking and understanding Hebrew.

I’ve also gotten a temporary, part-time job with a caterer, helping to prepare food for the Holidays. The other night I made gefilte fish for two and a half hours. Guh. Tonight, I think it’s shnitzel and meatballs. Hopefully, within a month or so, I’ll feel confident enough with my Hebrew to try to get a job in a restaurant or bakery. Annie is still finalizing her plans for organizations to work for, after interviewing with almost a dozen places. When she decides, I’m guessing she’ll blog about it.

In other news, the Eagles got killed by the Cowboys last night and I stayed up til 1am listening to the massacre on the Internet. I’m 0-4 in my Fantasy Football League. We switched to Standard time this past weekend, so I think it’s only a 6 hour time difference with the East coast of the US until whenever.

Want to visit? Northwest and American have very inexpensive fares for the end of December / beginning of January. I’m talking less than $650 round trip. So get over here! The pastries alone make it a worthwhile trip.

Wow, I still have to write about Rosh Hashanah. And I have some general observations about Jerusalem, Israel, etc. But this is a good start. Shanah tovah all!